Ryan Lochte continues to insist a security guard had no right to pull a gun on him and fellow swimmers — but conceded that his “immature, intoxicated behavior tarnished” the Rio games.
The Olympic swimmer denied his behavior justified a gun-toting Brazilian rent-a-cop feeling threatened at a Rio gas station, where Lochte claimed the group was robbed.
“Not me getting aggressive. I mean that’s not me … getting mad and angry and wanting to fight or anything like that,” he told NBC’s “Today” show, in the final installment of an interview that aired Monday.
“But I was upset that we got pulled out of the taxi for, I thought, something that — there’s no reason for a gun to be pulled out for us for doing nothing.”
Lochte, Gunnar Bentz, James Feigen and Jack Conger had been out partying into the early morning hours of Aug. 14 when they asked their taxi driver to pull over at a Rio station.
That’s where Lochte ripped an advertising plaque off a wall and the swimmers then urinated out in the open.
Before the swimmers could vamoose, gas station security guards stopped the swimmers and forced them to pay for the damage.
Hours later, Lochte spun a wild tale of how they were pulled over by bandits — posing as cops — and robbed at gunpoint. Lochte embellished the story, saying a gun was cocked and pressed against his forehead.
“I was upset, there was no reason for us to be sitting down with a gun pointed to us for nothing that we did,” Lochte told NBC.
A Rio judge, João Batista Damasceno, told USA Today that Lochte and his crew might have had some reason to believe they were robbed.
“If they only asked for the amount of the damage, it may not be a robbery,” Damasceno said. “But if the amount taken is higher than the value of the damages, with the use of a weapon by the ‘security,’ this is robbery.”
Nonetheless, a contrite Lochte said he understands why his drunken behavior brought shame to America.
“They (the people of Rio) put on a great games,” he said. “They did everything. And my immature, intoxicated behavior tarnished that a little.”